Andrew Yang (b. 1975) is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, the founder of Venture for America (VFA), and a U.S. 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. He worked in startups and early-stage growth companies as a founder or executive from 2000 to 2009. After he founded VFA, the Obama administration selected him in 2012 as a “Champion of Change” and in 2015 as a “Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship”.In November 2017 Yang launched his campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.His signature issue is support for what he calls the “Freedom Dividend”, a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) for every American adult over 18 years old. Yang believes UBI is a necessary response to the rapid development of automation that is leading to workforce challenges. According to CNN on May 23 Yang ranked tenth out of the top ten Democratic candidates. The first Democratic candidate debates begin on June 26. Yang is scheduled to participate on June 27.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s initiative to support local newsrooms through American Journalism Fellows is a creative proposal worthy of consideration to bolster community-based news PEN America acknowledged in a statement today.

According to Yang’s campaign website, the American Journalism Fellows initiative would place 535 journalists in local newsrooms across the country. Changing technology and the shift of advertising revenue from news organizations to tech giants have undermined the traditional business model of journalism. Yang’s initiative aims to “provide resources to ensure a strong independent press, free up a critical mass of reporters to meet market-based demands, [and] affirm journalism as a profession.”

In a June 16 interview with CNN, Yang argued for government investment in local news by citing studies that connect increasing political polarization to the collapse of local reporting.

“If you believe in a vibrant democracy, or even a functional democracy,” Yang said, “then you have to believe in local journalism.”

The campaign website said reporters from each state would be “nominated by a body of industry professionals and selected by a nonpartisan commission. Selected reporters will receive a 4-year grant of $400,000 ($100,000 per year) and will be stationed at a local news organization with the condition that they report on issues relevant to the district during the period of their Fellowship.

“We commend Yang for his recognition of the valuable service that local news outlets provide to communities,” said PEN America’s Washington Director Thomas O. Melia. “Journalism, and local journalism in particular, is an asset to democracy. In the struggle to preserve and support this fundamental institution, we welcome new and innovative ideas that add to the discourse.

“Care would have to be taken to ensure that such a program did not lead to journalists promoting government views or perspectives, but instead enhanced independent and investigative journalism.

“Going forward, we hope other campaigns and political party leadership will follow Yang’s lead in formulating concrete policy proposals that seek to reinforce local journalism as a public good.”

DISCLAMER: This content is meant to be informative and is not to be construed as an endorsement of Yang. The Poet by Day does not endorse political candidates but does stand for freedom of expression and integrity in journalism and assumes that as writers, poets and artists, readers here share this interest and concern.

PEN America is active in supporting freedom of the press in local communities around the country. It’s Press Freedom Incentive Fund provides financial support for initiatives that mobilize communities to demand an independent and robust local press. By uniting supporters, readers, and writers from coast to coast in support of journalism, PEN America stands in solidarity with local newsrooms nationwide. PEN America is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that does not endorse political candidates.

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PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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“Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.” Friedrich Nietzsche

She is older now – no! – not elderly yet,
but getting there, enough so the face
staring at her from the hall mirror
is her mother’s or her grandmother’s
The plump little sparrow of a body
she’s living in, slow, matronly, achingWell, certainly it’s not hers . . .

The place where she lives is a bit alien,
balmy weather, more-or-less one season
The street is not unappealing having
trees, birch and magnolia positioned
among aging oak and reliable evergreen
At daybreak, birds nesting there make
harsh and urgent conversation, pitching
their morning news against the endless
rumble and whoosh of a nearby freeway

Dressed in her mother’s face looking down
at her mother’s hands, she sits and listens,
no longer a juicy green story unfolding, just
a crisp brown sidebar to other lives, she’s
set in a place with rare moments of quiet
They drop like the cool spun-silver of dusk
after the unrelenting heat of a summer day
The hush, sudden and infrequent, shocks
her mind into musing, memory, nostalgia

She wonders what it would be like to
lie awake listening to the quiet of a place
where snowflakes sometimes drift to
earth, powdering the landscape with
tranquility, or what it would feel like to
walk outside and press her naked face
to a winter sky, to feel icy crystals against
warm skin, to see their shapes reflected by
the stars, to know eveyone she loves is
dreaming under the same alabaster moon

She wonders what it would be like to walk
along 93rd Street in new Easter shoes,
to make her way to Mass past spring flowers
dancing above the last of the snow-pack,
to buy a colorfully-mixed bouquet after church,
to make the requisite call to her distant father,
to hear her name on his lips just once more,
to ask him the questions she never dared ask,
to roast lamb scented with garlic and rosemary,
serving an overflowing household at a table set
with roses and damask and best tableware

She wonders how it would feel to live
once more in a land with distinct seasons,
to dance with her high school sweetheart
and to retrieve all the loved and lost souls,
to welcome back the nights pillowed in silence,
to awaken on crisp cosseting Regina Pacis morns,
to say good-bye to the numbing consistency
of endless balmy days and highway drone and
strolling strange streets in soft stoic solitude
seeking new rituals, new traditions, new friends
to replace the irreplaceable, knowing those
spring days are gone and gone, never to live again

Part of the process of growing older is loss. That’s not to say there aren’t compensations and rewards, but that would be a theme for another day. Aging is rich in learning the spiritual lesson of nonattachment, especially as physical abilities wane and funerals are more frequent than weddings and birth celebrations. In my circle, we’re no longer living in the houses in which we raised our childen. We’ve all downsized to studio apartments or small cottages or homes. These lessons of loss, acceptance (not to imply resignation), and reinventing life, are part of the human condition. Please share your thoughts and experiences in your own poetry.

NEW RULES

please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link

IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.

PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.

Deadline: Monday, June 24 by 8 pm Pacific Daylight Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check ​The Time Zone Converter.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro. It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.

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The Poet by Day is an information hub for poets and writers. Featured each week are Calls for Submissions, Contests, Events and other useful news. Responses to WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPTS are published on the following Tuesday. SEND ANNOUNCEMENTS AND PRESS RELEASES to thepoetbyday@gmail.com

The BeZine fosters understanding through a shared love of the arts and humanities and all things spirited; seeks to make a contribution toward personal healing and deference for the diverse ways people try to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of a world in which illness, violence, despair, loneliness and death are as prevalent as hope, friendship, reason and birth. Submissions to Jamie Dedes bardogroup@gmail.com

Actively supports peace, environmental sustainability, social justice and a life of the spirit.

The BeZine

Social Justice as the world burns and wars rage Global protest actions on the Climate Crisis have been scheduled for September, as fires rage from the Arctic to the Amazon [1]. Potential conflicts in the Middle East seem on the verge of flaring into their own wildfires, most prominently as I write this: Taliban-US, Iran-US, […]

The U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis launched a formal request for information as it drafts policy recommendations for Congress. The committee’s questions for stakeholders are posted at climatecrisis.house.gov/inforequest. The committee is slated to submit legislative recommendations to Congress in March of 2020 and a final report by December. It requests feedback by November 22, […]

The sad paragraphs in the paper offer no answers but they fade a little once I’m outside although there’s rain in the air and the sudden sun silvering naked twigs as I enter the park doesn’t last. I’m in the copse where rooks are flapping in quarrel as usual, when it stops me in my […]

Dotted like a navy formation, moving like a flotilla, the waves deceive the eyes, spinning like dervish. Our planet- green and beautiful may vanish. Offshore, the white blades against the blue sea, clean energy, harnessing wind, God given and free. Will no birds soar towards the azure sky? Under the noctilucent clouds, a lifetime of […]

to be like Greta Thunberg you must become yourself completely as though there were no prison of skin to stay inside no ego to say don’t try no doors to close the kind of bravery that moves lives is not second hand it is the ultimate it’s like an we can do it trip the […]